


The Adventures of Julia Buchanan and Degenerate Moral Values

by kayliemalinza



Series: The Brooklyn Buchanans [10]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 01:48:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7665607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayliemalinza/pseuds/kayliemalinza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Originally <a href="http://kayliemalinza.tumblr.com/post/89812825581/the-barnes-family-moved-into-the-same-housing">posted on Tumblr</a>.</p>
          </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Originally [posted on Tumblr](http://kayliemalinza.tumblr.com/post/89812825581/the-barnes-family-moved-into-the-same-housing).

the barnes family moved into the same housing complex as the rogers family when bucky was about 7 (and steve was 6) and the mothers and the sons all quickly became fast friends

papa barnes would be deployed or sleeping on the base for stretches of days or weeks, and when that happened julia would pack a little bag for bucky and hold his hand and walk him over to the rogers place to spend the night

the boys had a lot of fun together and eventually bucky said, mama, mama, next time can steve stay at our place?

julia and sarah exchanged a glance over the boys’ heads and then vaguely declined

the whole point of bucky sleeping over is so that julia can sneak out to the clubs and go dancing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #she always creeps around at 3 o' clock in the morning and taps on sarah's bedroom window #so sarah will know she got home alright #'gosh sarah it was the bee's knees. sometimes you oughta think about coming with me.' #'not a chance you hussy. now button up your coat and get to bed before you catch a cold.' #'sarah you're handsome enough to be a flapper if you tried. let me cut your hair.' #'i think NOT.' #okay so at least once julia never makes it back to her own apartment #the next morning bucky's like oh no you're here really early! do i have to go already? #and julia's like no baby. now go into the kitchen and ask mrs rogers to pour me a cup of coffee. #right but on like a weekly basis sarah looks at julia in her modest floral dress and prim hair and soft voice small mannerisms and goes #what a goddamn liar #have you considered just being one person all the time because this must get exhausting #idk sarah have you considered not being BORING #(no julia would never say that julia wouldn't even think of it julia's terrified sarah would give her a slap) #you know #for variable definitions of 'terrified'


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally [posted on Tumblr](http://kayliemalinza.tumblr.com/post/90182303066/im-hoping-julia-and-her-husband-have-a-fairly).

i’m hoping julia and her husband have a fairly amiable open relationship. idk how feasible that is considering the time period and how committed they are to maintaining respectability, but i want it  
  
like, the husband can keep a couple mistresses without people fussing too much about it and i guess julia knows about them and doesn’t mind. she’s required to be a lot more sly about her own shenanigans–he has to maintain his career and the reputation of his wife is crucial to that–but julia’s good at sneaking, i think  
  
and it’s not like there’s cell phone cameras everywhere  
  
idk exactly how safe she’d be crossing brooklyn at 3am but i waaant to beliiiieve  
  
julia and the husband probably accidentally meet in the same club one night and it’s the best date they’ve ever had  
  
and julia’s duality–the virgin-whore dichotomy she’s internalized–that’s part of it, too, bc they first met when she was hanging out in immigrant bars and sassing people in foreign languages  
  
that’s the person mr barnes went giddy for and ate out in a back alley  
  
and then, unfortunately, they had to get married  
  
and suddenly she’s. wearing long skirts and dithering over the price of tinned meat.  
  
part of the antipathy between mr barnes and aunt rhoda is how julia changes when rhoda is around  
  
she’s quieter, more polite, drawn in and compliant without being *pliable*  
  
the julia who hitches her breath and loosens up when you go to hitch her legs over your shoulders is very different from the julia who holds her tongue and moves over when you poke her in the ribs  
  
julia is an exercise in frustration for the people who actually know her, i think  
  
which is very few people at all


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally [posted on Tumblr](http://kayliemalinza.tumblr.com/post/99780276286/okay-i-know-fandom-has-a-thing-about-good-boy).

okay i know fandom has a thing about good-boy bucky vs bad-boy steve but it’s not that steve’s a bad boy, it’s that he’s stalwart and outspoken and (self)righteous which isn’t the same thing but when you’re a corrupt authority figure you like to paint that as being a bad boy

steve is steve through and through but the preppiness, the buttoned-up, hair-slicked-upness, that’s not bucky being a good boy that’s bucky _presenting_ as a good boy

sartorial subterfuge is a little beyond steve but bucky and julia can be dressed up sharp and nod and smile and cut a grand picture but let’s be clear here if there’s some kind of Very Important Speech going on then steve’s the one sitting up straight and listening intently, while bucky and julia are the ones passing a flask back and forth


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally [posted on Tumblr](http://kayliemalinza.tumblr.com/post/101075398026/in-addition-to-being-a-military-secretary-and).

 

in addition to being [a military secretary and later a codebreaker and spy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7665889/chapters/17456212), julia buchanan barnes writes porn.  
  
she starts off translating dirty comics for the immigrants in the bars, marking the italian in neat, spiky pencil next to each vulgar caption while the more fluent of the men there help her suss out the right colloquialisms (this is how she meets dino barnes, btw–his english is better than most and his italian had been bolstered by cousins in half a dozen regions.)  
  
julia dutifully collects these new words and phrases in a little notebook, which is differentiated from her respectable translation notebook by a small red dot on the cover.

  
later, she writes a language primer with witty, vulgar stories told in english alongside italian with simple illustrations. she even explains differences in tone and formality–this is how you would speak to a lady in the hat store, this to a girl in the bar, this to your boss, this to your mate. a cross between baby’s first reader and a [tijuana](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tijuana_bible) [bible](http://tijuanabibles.org/).  
  
the language primer comes about a few months into her marriage, when julia has exhausted herself playing the role of respectable new bride, no clubs or dancing, and turns to smut just to keep herself sane. her relationship with dino is very strained at this point–until he discovers what she’s working on, and provides assistance with italian colloquialisms, and they reconnect again.  
  
when bucky is a little over a year old, julia’s working out the final drafts with the illustrator. she becomes very nervous when bucky wakes up and wants to be included, wants to grasp at the drawings–so she puts a blindfold on him. bucky takes it reasonably well and quiets down, concentrating on playing with her fingers or drinking his bottle.  
  
the illustrator thinks she was being silly–“what’s he gonna do, tell someone?” but julia just stares him down and insists that they use codewords. “i just think that maria’s… cantaloupes should be slightly less ripe. i understand that you have a particular artistic style but this is ridiculous.”  
  
after a while bucky fusses to be let down so she sends him crawling all over the apartment, blindfold still snugly tied around his head. it helps him focus, actually; he builds his most impressive block towers while blindfolded.  
  
he also accidentally knocks them down more often, but that’s half the fun anyway.  
  
the primer is a great success, and julia does a couple dozen follow-ups–more advanced english, themed vocabulary like beach words, office building, in the kitchen, etc.. by popular request she branches into other languages according to the demographics of the immigrant population, and thusly ends up learning a fair amount of german and polish.  
  
besides the primers, she does a lot of english-only works, short stories and novellas that are published in magazines or as standalone pamphlets (or however the literary erotica industry worked in the 20s and 30s.)  
  
she keeps things even more tightly under wraps as bucky grows up–working on the manuscript only when he’s occupied elsewhere, covering it swiftly when he pokes his head into the little parlor-cum-office to ask for a snack or cuddle or glass of milk.  
  
the illustrators are only allowed to come around during the school day–although inevitably their sessions would run over and julia scrambles to cover up the sketches as the boys came clattering through the door–or else steve’d be home sick, bunked up on her couch while sarah works a shift at the hospital. it’s relatively easy to concentrate on the less ribald section of the books on those days, detailing the general character designs and fully-clothed how-de-do’s in low tones in another room.  
  
one of the artists, mr. goldstein, is steve’s first professional contact and mentor, casting an encouraging eye over steve’s sketchpad and gifting him with a genuine artist’s crayon–a well-used one, of course, sharpened into a stub too small for mr. goldstein’s hand but just right for steve’s runty prepubescent grip.  
  
it’s not long after this that bucky, while rifling through the closet in search of old flapper dresses and shooting lambent looks at the make-up tins on the dresser for reasons he doesn’t understand, finds his mother’s trunk of dirty books.  
  
the books are covered in brown paper wrappers marked by an obscure numerical code on the side, a dewey decimal system of licentiousness. he recognizes that his mother sometimes reads these in soda shops, or curled up on the couch in steve’s apartment, slitting her eyes in a smile at mrs. rogers over the spine. sometimes mrs. rogers comes and perches on the arm of the sofa, and mama shows her a page, and mrs. rogers swats her on the shoulder.  
  
so bucky, being newly teenaged with all the genital preoccupation and invincibility that implies, starts to sneak out books by switching their brown paper covers with same-sized books from his own collection and praying that his mama doesn’t crack that particular one open and discover that it was a dime store pirate adventure instead of her beloved european ravishing.  
  
julia probably does pull one of those books out once and notice the swap (but not before reading a few paragraphs in a state of utmost confusion and suspense–but when are the pirates going to _kiss?_ ) however, she doesn’t say anything about it. that way, if bucky should ever mention the trunk, she can feign surprise at its contents and blame mr. barnes.  
  
besides, julia doesn’t exactly want to tell bucky “no”–julia is particularly unskilled at telling bucky “no”–and she’d much rather have him browse her highly selective and erudite collection of queer erotica than go sneaking down to some shady store to buy a tijuana bible. not that she doesn’t appreciate tijuana bibles, of course, but the exclusively male salaciousness gets a bit much.  
  
coincidentally, it’s mostly thanks to that wonderful little trunk that bucky picks up right quick on the added dimension to his mother’s relationship with mrs. rogers.  
  
that development doesn’t happen until after mr. barnes dies, of course. although sarah rogers knew that julia’s shenanigans during her marriage were with the knowledge of and slight blessing of her husband (and it’s not like dino had any room to complain, with two mistresses and three other kids installed around the borroughs,) her personal morality forbids her from getting involved with a married person.  
  
a widow is a different matter. julia stops going to clubs for a while after her husband dies, part of the general mourning withdrawal. there’s no-one else’s shoulder to cry on and sarah, being her close friend at that time, feels that this is a good excuse for emotional and physical intimacy. one thing leads to another, and after that, julia and sarah are attached at the hip. even rhoda backs off at that point; her sister’s being taken care of just fine.  
  
julia and bucky leave their apartment and move in with the rogers instead–claiming that there’s some difficulty getting the pension, or that they feel unsafe living alone, or that there are just too many memories of mr. barnes to stomach living there anymore. these are all excuses (though julia does legitimately need to save money; she isn’t producing much salable work at this point, and is passing along a hefty portion of mr. barnes’ pension to his other children and their mothers.)  
  
she and sarah share a bed for a year and a half. bucky’s twin bed is moved into steve’s room, making things a lot more cramped but acceptably cozy, and in the winter they push the beds together next to the radiator; if steve just happens to end up crammed under bucky’s armpit in a deep sleep instead of waking himself up every few hours with his own shivering, then so be it. bucky is a caring and noble friend; he will endure elbows for the sake of steve’s health.  
  
steve, when he thinks about it, assumes that’s why his mother and mrs. barnes share a bed, too. his turnbuckle cast clanks when he walks so he’s never surprised anybody by walking into a room, has never caught his mother and de-facto stepmother with their arms around each other and teeth against necks and apron strings being slowly pulled loose.  
  
bucky, though. bucky gets really good at about-facing and exiting the room as silently as he came in. he tries bringing up the subject with steve in order to suss out his opinions on this, just in case steve gets his dander up and bucky needs to run interference before he says something rude to julia (steve has a habit of getting his dander up and saying rude things, though not generally to mrs. barnes.)  
  
but even after dropping some pretty heavy hints, steve doesn’t get it. he simply doesn’t have the same sexual and romantic awareness as bucky, even though he’s only a year younger. his hormones are a lot less rabid, and will pretty much always be like that.  
  
bucky even shows steve some of the smut books. they crouch in the square of moonlight from the window and take turns reading, but although bucky gets heated and a little squirmy and acutely aware of every rasp of fingers across paper, the knob of steve’s elbow against his ribs, the baking soda flatness of his breath, steve just laughs nervously and gets bored with the purple prose.  
  
not julia’s prose, of course. once she realized bucky was going into her trunk, she moved out all her personal works to a more secure location.  
  
bucky will stumble on her works eventually, of course, when he hits his late teens and starts exploring the queer clubs in their neighborhood, and the various bodies and personalities contained therein. lester in particular is a great fan of julia’s work, although he and bucky don’t get involved until bucky’s in his late twenties and has been making notes on her manuscripts for years.  
  
(and that’s a change from her early days spinning lurid tales; instead of sending bucky across the carpet with a blindfold, she jumps up from her desk with a shout of eureka and chivvies bucky away from his shaving and onto the couch so he can peruse her latest, most brilliant paragraph.  
  
“what are you two reading?” steve will ask, friendly and how-do-ye-do, when he walks into the living room.  
  
bucky nearly falls off the sofa arm. julia smiles and slides the manuscript under the pillow. “wholesome tales for obedient children,” she says.  
  
steve gets frowny at them both but he doesn’t say anything. he dislikes little white lies on principle, but he knows everything goes more smoothly when he pretends to believe them.  
  
but that’s a ways off yet, when steve is on his own and cares more about getting rent paid on time than poking at the oddities of barnesian psychology.)  
  
after a year or so of cohabitation, julia and bucky move out of the rogers household into an apartment of their own. julia and sarah didn’t break up, per se, but four people is a bit much for that small space, and bucky was starting to go a little stir-crazy without the privacy of a bedroom for himself. julia was similarly frustrated; not only was sarah’s sex drive much lower than hers, but trying to get up to things with two adolescent boys on the other side of a thin wall was fairly dampening. sarah also insisted on monogamy, which was difficult for julia to handle once she recovered from her husband’s death.  
  
so after a few fraught conversations, they decide to return their relationship to its previous platonic state. sarah gets her solitary room back and julia is once again free to sneak out at nights to go dancing. after assuring sarah that no details about her would be included, julia starts writing erotica full time again. this time around she’s more involved with distribution and her fanbase, courting money. by the time world war II breaks out, julia’s various pseudonyms (a different one for every genre) are fairly well-established.  
  
after she enlists with the SSR, julia starts up a bi-monthly serial, produced and distributed by lorraine. lorraine collects feedback, handles distribution and payment, and leans on peggy for protection when these contraband materials are discovered by superior officers.  
  
(“what are you reading?” steve asks brightly, walking into peggy’s office.  
  
she shoves the papers into a drawer and slams it shut so fast it nearly takes her fingers off.  
  
“weapons manual,” she says.  
  
steve turns beet-red, turns on his heel and leaves. later that day he mumbles something to barnes and barnes that makes them shake so much from stifled laughter that they miss the bull’s eye at the shooting range.)  
  
peggy was probably brought into this whole affair quite by accident, being at some point the officer doing the confiscating, and lorraine at that point being very coquettish and persuasive and just a smidge bratty.  
  
lorraine, if you didn’t grok this from cap1, is sharky and brilliant and possesses not a speck of shame in her entire being. julia blatantly creates a character based on her, and the character is fucked and beaten and isn’t repentant one bit, and lorraine laughs and offers to model for the cover.  
  
lorraine does great things after the war, i think. she gets frustrated by julia’s selective reticence–julia would much rather gently nudge the limits of obscenity laws than bash through them with lurid excess which is, of course, lorraine’s preference. so after the war, lorraine starts collecting other, more brazen erotica authors and illustrators, and starts up a series of publishing houses (a series, of course, because they are frequently shut down.)  
  
julia can always find representation at lorraine’s firms, however, when other publishers aren’t giving her the contracts she wants. she starts branching out–genre fiction, like pirate adventures and petticoat dramas and sci-fi and, although the genre is new and she is getting old, 60s spy thrillers.  
  
she’s always a hack writer, charming and fluent but fluffy, poured out on half-asleep sunday nights or while sitting in the bath with a bottle of wine. her erotica roots always subtly make themselves known, lurking just out of sight between paragraphs.  
  
sometimes that’s quite literal–at least half a dozen of her novels have alternate versions, pages of sex casually snipped before being sent off to this publisher or that. if you know the right person, you can get those cut scenes, typed up in a stapled brochure and carefully labelled with page numbers corresponding to where they’re supposed to go.  
  
julia’s novels are also used as red herrings to protect spies and smugglers–you find porn on someone, you assume that’s all they’re hiding, you think that’s the only reason they look shifty, so you stop looking. you still arrest them, mostly likely, but it’s far easier for easier for the u.s. to negotiate for the release of an american convicted of distributing obscene materials than it is to negotiate the release of a spy.  
  
and many times, the manuscripts themselves are the espionage: julia was gifted with codework, and used her novels and short stories variously as the ciphers for data or the data itself, hiding intel within codewords and odd sentence constructions.  
  
(julia is particularly brilliant at the 60s spy thrillers, as you can imagine, but tragically undersold: those books are too meta, too tongue-in-cheek, too riddled with inside jokes for civilians to appreciate. i’ll leave it up to you to decide how many natasha’s read.)  
  
but that’s a few years into the future, yet–during the war, julia works very hard to have a couple of installments available for lorraine to publish on their regular schedule while julia’s overseas on missions. then [_that_ mission](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7665889/chapters/17456290) happens, and julia’s late getting back.  
  
lorraine, consummate opportunist/businesswoman that she is, greets agent barnes with open arms. people have been buying old issues and they’re hungry for more, she says. we can release the new installment at a higher price just as soon as you get it done.  
  
peggy (who was present at julia’s debriefing, and then requested to further debrief her alone, and therefore knows exactly how julia got to the treeline) nearly snatches lorraine bald, telling her to shut up.  
  
but it’s alright; julia just wants to get on getting on. she wants to cuddle her baby niece, sarah shade, and write the next installment and weed her sister’s garden. she wants to sit at a dark desk in a small office and codebreak telegrams about weapons shipments.  
  
she does write down the encounter, though, in knife-sharp detail. the narrative isn’t salacious, and of course she doesn’t offer it to lorraine to be distributed–but it is a vital part of history, although few historians can stomach it. her second husband has all these materials in trust, i think, waiting for academia to catch up. the essay is already well known in a sort of manuscript culture: just as the installments of serialized erotica were passed around in the barracks, julia’s personal work is passed around in therapy groups. anonymously, of course.  
  
sarah shade–decades later, when she’s all grown up–wants to publish it in one of her books, the keystone piece in a heavy discussion of women’s experiences in the armed forces, but julia was vacillating between fear and bullish bravery. she hadn’t given permission yet, always pushing off the hard yes or no until she saw a final draft. sarah shade was respectful of that, understood that it was a difficult decision, there were lots of cultural things to consider, and that julia was by nature and by occupation a very private person.  
  
sarah shade publishes the piece eventually, but she keeps it anonymous and carefully scrubs out any identifying details from the surrounding discussion and interview, because julia never did see that final draft.  
  
she disappears in the late 70s, leaving behind three unfinished genre manuscripts and a shoebox full of handwritten notes than even S.H.I.E.L.D. can’t find the ciphers for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> # okay but let’s be serious here half of the characters in julia’s novels are from fake names she thought up while being arrested in speakeasies


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally [posted on Tumblr](http://kayliemalinza.tumblr.com/post/110192798321/at-least-once-during-some-fraught-and-harrowing).

at least once during some ~fraught and harrowing mission that julia happens to be tagging along with there’s some discussion of how they’re going to infiltrate an enemy building and julia wants to go and the commandos are like no ma'am we couldn’t possibly ask you to, then julia looks bucky dead in the eye and says, “if i didn’t know how to crawl out a window, you wouldn’t exist.”

the commandos are like _oh my god_ and the ladies are like _hell yeah_ (lorraine’s practically chin-handsing she wants this story so bad) and steve’s looking very intently at a tree on the horizon pretending he didn’t hear it and bucky just sighs like yes, mama, _i know_.


End file.
